Gtx 980m 4gbvram vs Gtx 980m 8gb vram

Thoughts ? would the extra 4gb of v ram be more helpful for editing/ using adobe products?

 

For gaming, you will more likely than not run out of horse power before ram. For photoshop I'm not sure how well it utilizes vram.

 

Any benchmarks to support this?

 

Google brings up tests showing 4gb is plenty and you need to be in 4k with special settings on to drive vram above 4gb

 

Really? Not seeing that much relevant stuff. You need to be testing software which can clearly leverage >4GB in order to answer OP's question.

 

e.g. GTA V on ultra settings + 8x MSAA + 1080 will not even come close to utilizing the full 4GB. Extra unused capacity does not affect performance, but if you run out of memory you will notice huge decrease in performance.

 

Surely the point is "why not go for the 8GB option so that its future proofed ?" ?

 

Depends, I jumped on the outlet deal and grabbed a certain configuration. If I were to buy new from Dell and get the 8gb version instead of 4 from outlet, I would've paid 600 or more. So it depends on your deal. In my case, is it worth 600 to future proof and possibly never utilize the extra Ram?

 

Thats fair enough. the price diff for me is not that great... only about 200

 

At 200 I say why not, just go for it,try to haggle a little with the reps.

 

The 4GB versions are those soldered on, right, AFAIK, the only 8GB versions are like those I sell, and not for the new Alienware models, because they are MXM cards instead of soldered on.
OR - does DELL now offer 8GB versions of the soldered on 980M's too ?

If so, im curious as to what it gets in Firestrike

 

No Dell are offering the 6gb 97Om and 8gb 98Om built in now. They are hardwired. Check out the website.

 

Another important thing to consider is that if you plan to buy the latest and greatest, paying upwards of $600 to get 4GB more of VRAM that would highly likely never be utilized would not be practical.

I have two AW's...one has the 980M w/ 4GB and I game on it at 4K at times and have always paid close attention to the vram usage via AlienAdrenaline. (Recordings....) I have the AW hooked up to my external Samsung 4K monitor and even on Max settings running at 4K, it barely scratches the 70% threshold of the 4GB of vram that is available.

Personally, I'm going to jump on the latest and greatest, especially with the new generation of GPU's rolling out in the near future. If you're anywhere in the same boat as me, it'd be wise to not dish out $600 for something you won't even use (...assuming you'd be just gaming etc....)

I also work with a lot of rendering and design....

My personal rule of thumb: "If you are planning on keeping the AW for several several years, then sure why not....pay the extra $600 and get the 8GB....if not, don't waste the money and just get the 4GB as you will highly likely never even utilize the extra vram."

 

That makes sense, although in the UK they are all shipping with the higher Vram as standard it seems. Its only the outlet refurbs that carry the lower. And the refurbs are not hugely cheaper over here.

 

I see....in that case, if the difference is slim (I'd say a few hundred or less)....it wouldn't hurt to opt of for the 8gb..

Good luck mate! Keep us posted....

* I have both the 4gb and 8gb 980M....if you were to drive either one, you'd never be able to tell which one is which....

 

it's custom to dell only: no other manufacturer is doing it so it's not really official per se.

 

I know true VRAM usage is hard to measure, but according to afterburner I show 4-5GB when playing Dying Light at 1920x1080. Maybe with 4GB it would not make any difference in reality but if the cost is small ($200 or less) I would go for it just in case.

 

If only mine didn't have a bad Vid card I would get some bechmarks.. I should have the new mobo by the end of the week I hope.

 

Be aware of the scam Dell has been running. They will blatantly ship you the 4GB variant, apologize for a "marketing mistake", then refuse to exchange for the 8GB version citing factory issues. Search for the "980M 8GB" thread.

 

Probably why there's loads of machines with 4GB 980M's in the outlet!! I got me a good deal so I'm not complaining!

 

8gb is useless for these cards to begin with. I am receiving an 8gb version though because of a system swap. But I dont expect all that videomemory to be used.

 

i ordered an outlet 15 R2 with a 980m w/ 4gb.... it showed up and has 8gb, so I am very happy.

 

Pointless is a strong word, but yes, even on a 4k monitor playing games in max settings...the 4gb is sufficient. So far.... ...until future games come out that will actually utilize a lot of vram. ..but by that time, it'd be time for a new laptop anyway with a 100000gb vram Pascal.

I game at 4k in max settings and have been closely monitoring the vram usage....the highest I've seen it go is ~70%...


Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

So the extra 4g of vram wont help with rendering times/photoshop work/video playback in adobe after effects? i know there is an option to set the vram amount so it must help somewhat.

 

Indeed, however it's not anything dramatic to justify the cost unless it's only a few hundred at most.

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

speed does matter bro
fury x with 4 gb vram will always smash r9 390/x eventho they double the vram
ah i forgot to add overclocking 8 gb vram will much harder than 4 gb vram
making 1 ghz boost effective on 4 g vram is easier than 8gb

 

That is not actually true. You can get the 6GB GTX970M with one of the SKUs of the MSI Ghost Pro and Im pretty sure Ive seen the higher rams on both GPUs on other brands too

 

It's still not an official card.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

I doubt you will get an answer on this gaming-focused forum - not a single relevant response so far, as you can see. I would ask at some Adobe forums.

 

Hope this helps....

I've ran a few games FPS, Racing etc...varies games on 4K MAX SETTINGS on my other 17R3 w/ 980M (4GB vram) and here are the results....

Question to ask yourself: "Do you really want to game at 4K with only getting >20-24fps? An extra 4GB of vram isn't going to help you....."

Solution: "If you really want to game at 4K and achieve higher frame rates, you'll need to SLI on a previous gen AW laptop or get a laptop with a desktop 980 GPU. Period. Or an Amp of course...which is what I'd opt for...."





IMPORTANT THING TO KEEP IN MIND:

"You will run out of horsepower before being able to utilize the extra vram with these graphically intense games. Therefore, if you don't mind gaming at 20-25fps on 4K with knowing that even 4GB is enough, then more power to you. If you're like the majority who can't stand anything below 60fps, then the 980M 4GB is more than enough and practical over having an extra 4GB that you'd never really use, "practically," in games unless it's for another app that can actually benefit from it. Even then...the difference would be minute. This doesn't mean that you also have to stick to gaming at 1080p. I've found to really like 2560x1440 as it gives me the best of both worlds of high fps that of 1080p and the quality jump in that of 4K.....it's a sweet spot of a resolution for gaming IMO. "

 

What's the basis of that claim? You appear to have no evidence, experience or knowledge to support it (i.e. you are not a graphics designer or another GPGPU software user). You can't extrapolate from the gaming experience.

 

Calm down turbo.

First of all you're very wrong with your empty assumptions. I work heavily with Adobe programs daily along with Mudbox. Even with my 3D work that have massive OpenGL textures or any rendering I've done working with 4K videos, not once have I encountered a situation where I felt that 4GB was not enough. So from a real world users experience, I can give the OP a definite answer in that 4GB is plenty...especially for Adobe (Photoshop, etc...).

I've posted the vram usage on my 4GB AW (gaming on max settings at 4K) just to show some data that would be relevant to even the extreme scenarios of one dealing with real time floating points and calculations for other programs that actually utilize vram...even then 4GB is more than enough in 90%+ of the scenarios in a professional working environment.

Now...given that the OP was asking about editing with using Adobe products, having more system RAM would be more practical, especially when 4GB of vram is plenty in most cases.

Take a chill pill...everything will be alright. Is it a full moon tonight? What the hay.....

 

What on earth does that matter, or even mean, if it is readily available across several manufacturers ? Surely no hardwired GPU solutions are "official cards" since you cant go out and buy them .. they all come with the laptop you are buying. You said it was specific to AW and that is not the case. That's all I'm saying

 

Calm down, just helping you with basic logic. If you have as much photo/video editing experience as you claim then why didn't you conduct a relevant benchmark? A 3 min google can confirm that 4gb is enough for current gaming, so people already know that and it's not what the OP was asking about.

 

Basic logic? Okaaayyy, you've obviously missed the point. Go read it again....

You're making it way too complicated.

OP was specific in referring to Adobe products.

Bottom line:

Is 4GB enough? - YES

To put this into perspective, how difficult would it be to answer someone asking about whether 8GB of system RAM is enough for gaming? Get the point?

End of story....

 

Still no benchmark to confirm that say editing a 4k video with many layers, filters etc won't benefit from the extra VRAM.

FYI 4GB of VRAM may not be quite enough for certain scientific applications.

 

Give it up already. It's not that serious. SMH....

 

Pls stop spamming. BTW given that you don't actually own the 8GB 980M, you are in no position to actually benchmark say after effects to measure any performance improvements due to additional memory (e.g. due to caching) - thus I withdraw my earlier suggestion.

 

Spamming? I believe you're the one being irrational here and suggest that you stop with this nonsense.

I own both the 17R3 with the 4gb and one with the 8gb 980M. Thank you very much.

Learn how to take constructive criticism, especially when you're out of line to begin with. What are you? 13?

 

The

Great, although it is now fairly nonsensical that your benchmarking was based on the 4GB variant alone.

FYI immature personal attacks like yours are likely to draw moderators' attention.

 

Speak for yourself. We'll let them determine that based on your initial attack. None of your responses have been productive. It's pretty obvious.

Just hang it up already. It's not a big deal.

 

Well, your "obvious" really means "clear, as far as my insight goes". Just to give you an example, you wanted to check if games could use more than 4GB of VRAM and used a machine equipped with only 4GB of VRAM to test this. Obviously for me (I'm a dev), no reasonable game would exceed the limit and crash so the results looked inconclusive given the graph showing almost all 4GB used. Someone else earlier in the thread checked this on a 980M 8GB machine and noted 5GB utilization. When I asked questions about your results and conclusions, you started calling me some silly names from your vocabulary which is not cool. This is basic etiquette.

BTW Quantum Leap comes out in April - MS claim it needs 6GB of VRAM at top settings, and again we are just talking games. The OP still doesn't know whether Adobe products can benefit from 8GB VRAM in practice, given all the "productive responses" provided.

 

You do enough definitive research and you will find it's hit and miss with the 4gb vs 8gb situation. At this current stage in "gaming" alone only few titles have actually came close to breaching the limits of vram and that's with mods. As for future proofing that's a financial decision in itself. Research is key. (Benchmarks)

 

It is indeed quite clear. Yes, you did come off pretty abrasive to start.

You're idea of needing more than 4gb of vram to test vram usage is moot. If you see the duration period of when I was gaming at 4k, there are no downward spikes or sudden dips, which means that the test done with the 4gb gpu was more than sufficient. Therefore, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Makes no sense.

Again, the purpose here is to answer OP's question. Is 4gb of vram enough for Adobe products. As an Adobe product user, I am saying yes. 4gb vram is enough.

 

More than enough. Which Adobe products do you use?

 

Mostly Premiere Pro, however, I always have Lightroom and Photoshop open for editing most of the time. The files that I work with are huge in that everything is shot in 4k for weddings etc.. Occasionally use Illustrator, but when I do it remains open as well. Granted multitasking has nothing to do with vram, but having 32GB of system RAM helps.

 

8GB is still a bit useless. I have an 8GB machine. But a lot of games are getting close though at fullHD. Assassins Creed Syndicate for example is constantly near 4gb with everything on the highest settings. But the GPU itself isnt powerful enough to fully utilize the 8GB.

Adobe apps hardly use videoram except if you try to work with the 3D function of Photoshop which is pretty crappy by the way. Cinema4D etc hardly uses it while rendering.

 

Exactly. So In regards to vram the Adobe products that you do utilize will be more of an affect towards your RAM and PROCESSOR.

 

A year ago a benchmark was done from users from reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/2vcepp/discussion_4gb_vram_being_used_at_1080p_in_2/

As far as software I couldn't find any high demanding vram otherwise only stated by users here from an Adobe forum have a nice read here it will help answer your question
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1614684?start=0&tstart=0

 

This is the point that I have been trying to get across in that 4GB of vram is sufficient for OP's needs with Adobe products.